Phishing Disguised as a Bounce Back

This ticket started like many do—with a client doing the right thing and asking questions.

He had received a message flagged by our email filtering system that looked like a standard bounce-back: “Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender.” The kind of thing you'd expect if you sent an email to a bad address. But here’s the twist—he hadn’t sent anything to that address.

Understandably, he was concerned that someone might be spoofing his email and sending messages on his behalf. That’s exactly the kind of situation that can spiral if ignored. So he reached out to us to investigate.

We dug into the logs and found no sign that any email had been sent from his account to that recipient—nothing in the outbox, nothing in the logs. What looked like a bounce-back was actually a cleverly disguised phishing email. The goal? To get the recipient to click the link out of curiosity and “see what bounced.”

Luckily, our email filtering system caught it and flagged it as a high risk for fraud—blocking it before it could hit the inbox.

We’re giving a big shoutout to our client for trusting their gut and reaching out, and another to our filtering tools for doing exactly what they’re meant to do. These kinds of phishing attempts are getting trickier to spot, but this one? Caught and crushed. Just the way we like it.

If something in your inbox ever feels off, don’t hesitate to reach out. We’re always happy to take a look and help keep things safe and stress-free.